Clockwork Heart
by Screaming Faeries
Summary: Nothing has been the same for Ginny since she lost touch with that little black diary back in her first year, but it takes her a while to realise this. Until she gets hold of a Time Turner, that is. ONESHOT.


**A.N:** Warning, this is has some smutty areas. This is written for the Gin 'n' Tonic challenge on Tumblr, with Week Two: Tom/Ginny AU (Time Travel!AU). I have also written this for my lovely friends Pureblcods  & Sinsinnatus!

* * *

 **I  
** _ **In The Shadows**_

Ginny's mind wasn't focused on the activity at present, as her body rocked with Harry's rhythm. She stared up at the ceiling over his shoulder, waiting for the act to end.

"Gin...ny..." Harry groaned as he froze his ministrations, grinding his hips into her as he emptied himself. Ginny glanced over the clock—he had managed to keep going for just short of two minutes. That was a new record for famous Harry Potter, who had a name for himself in so many other parts of the Wizarding World—but the boudoir wasn't one of them.

She waited for her fiancé to fall to the side of her, and then she quickly edged out of bed and crept to the en suite bathroom. She locked the door quietly and switched on the light, staring at herself in the mirror.

Ginny Weasley was a shadow of the woman she used to be. There were bags under her dull brown eyes, and her auburn hair was hack-ended and too thick. She hadn't been for a haircut in a _long_ time—in fact, she hadn't really taken much care of herself at all. She just stayed at home in the home that Harry and renovated in Godric's Hollow, waiting for him to come home from work—all the while, he waited for her to get pregnant.

It was something that Harry wanted to try from the moment they moved in together, and he didn't seem to care about the fact that Ginny just wasn't ready yet. She had only recently turned nineteen years old. She wanted to _do_ something with her life—she didn't want to just be her mother, who had essentially begun birthing children since she started to ovulate. Ginny quietly opened the cabinet door and reached for her Tampax box—something that Harry _never_ went near. She looked in the box and slid out a small sheet of pills, checking that she had taken the one she was required to take each day. This was the sole thing that was preventing her from getting pregnant.

It wasn't that she didn't _want_ to have a baby—she did, just not right now. And if it meant that she had to take birth control privately to ensure that she didn't get pregnant just yet, then she was willing to risk her relationship.

Ginny sat on the toilet, sighing. Everything was so _difficult_ lately—and it seemed like everyone was much too busy for her to talk to. She didn't feel like she could truly be open to Harry, and her mother would worry too much. Hermione was already shooting up in the Ministry, and didn't seem to have a shred of time for anyone as of late. The only other person that Ginny could talk to was Luna, but she had recently headed out for a world tour, and she didn't respond to letters very promptly.

She hadn't felt like she was able to truly let her heart out to someone for a long time. Not since she was eleven, in fact, and she had been able to pour out her feelings to a little black diary which _always_ wrote back.

* * *

 **II  
** _ **Wheel of Time**_

It had been easier than expected to acquire a Time Turner. Along with the rest of Wizarding Britain, Ginny believed that the Ministry had completely lost all the Time Turners in Department of Mysteries battle, but that wasn't the case. Did the Ministry really think that they had control of _every single_ manner of manipulating time?

She had expected it to be difficult to get hold of the Time Turner—perhaps it would have taken long enough for her to change her mind about the whole thing. However, the old man who had gotten into contact with Ginny was only too happy to part with the Time Turner. Apparently, the effects of messing around with time were taking a toll on him.

(He appeared to be in his seventies, but he confessed to Ginny that he was only thirty-five. That should have been enough of a warning for her, but it wasn't.)

Of course, Ginny had hidden the Time Turner from Harry. There was no way that she could pass it off as being just a piece of interesting jewellery—Harry had first hand experience with a Time Turner.

"I just need one more chance," she told herself agitatedly, as she sat at the kitchen table, fingering the intricate design of the Time Turner. "Just one more chance to _see_ him, to _speak_ to him.

"He wasn't Voldemort then," she continued assuredly, thinking of the boy that she used to pour her heart out to through a diary. Of course, he was well on his way, but he hadn't committed those murders yet. Not during the time that she wanted to travel to.

She was going to go back quite far, but it wouldn't be for long. Just for a few hours, maybe. Just to get away from the present.

Just a little while.

Taking a breath, she took hold of the tiny hourglass between her fingers, and started to spin it.

* * *

 **III  
** _ **Pages Turned**_

"Why do I feel like I know you?" Tom Riddle asked her. He was standing beside her on the snowy hillside of Hogsmeade, which faced the Shrieking Shack—only, the shack didn't look so much like a shack at this point. It appeared a little more homely, with smoke pouring from the chimney.

Ginny shrugged. "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me."

Tom eyed the length of her body in a fluid up-and-down motion. "You appeared out of nowhere this afternoon; the red-haired girl dressed so out of her time," his eyes glittered knowingly. "Try me."

"I used to talk to you," Ginny murmured. She hadn't wanted to admit it to him so quickly, but it was as though the deepness in his ebony eyes was as strong as Veritaserum. "I mean—it wasn't you _yet..._ I can't really explain it. I'm not allowed to..." Ginny thought of the Time Turner around her neck, and the immense risks that she was taking.

"You used to talk to me," Tom said smoothly, skipping over the strangeness of _how_ it was that Ginny could have spoken to him. "And what might we have spoken about?"

"I was just a stupid little girl," Ginny muttered, turning to face the Shrieking Shack. A stupid girl, whining and moaning into an old diary that..." she looked back at Tom, suddenly feeling quite vulnerable beneath his penetrating gaze. "That could talk back to me."

Tom dug around in the pocket of his robes suddenly, until he retrieved a familiar, if not slightly less battered, black diary. Ginny felt so overwhelmed with sudden emotion, unusual, strange emotion for an inanimate object that she hadn't realised had such an effect on her, that she almost snatched the diary out of his hand. "A diary like this one?" he asked calmly. Ginny nodded.

"That exact one," she whispered.

* * *

 **IV  
** _ **Rapture**_

"Tom," Ginny whined, throwing back her head as Tom clawed his fingers into the flesh of her hips. At this point of his life, he was younger than Harry, but clearly he was more experienced.

Ginny had never felt rapture like this during any point of making love to Harry.

The grass beneath her knees prickled her skin as she rocked backwards and forwards, tossing her hair over her shoulders. It was so wrong, so terribly, terribly wrong—but how could something so wrong feel so good?

She was cheating on her fiancé. But was she? Technically, what she was doing with Tom wasn't even happening yet, as far as Harry was concerned. Harry wasn't even _born_ yet. At the moment, she didn't care. Once again, she was pouring out her heart to Tom Riddle—it just wasn't in the same way that she used to do.

"Who...are...you...Ginevra Weasley?" Tom gasped, his dark gaze boring into her as his hands rose to grasp her waist. He was speeding her up, rising his hips to meet each thrust.

Her head lolled back, her mouth open. But no words came to her lips. Ginny didn't know if it was because of the ecstasy that she was feeling, or because she wasn't she knew the answer anymore.

Who was she?

* * *

 **V  
** _ **His Dark Embrace**_

"If you do it, you'll live forever with me," Tom whispered. He was sitting alongside Ginny, and staring down at a still, unmoving body below him. They were in the first floor girls bathroom, looking down at the still frame of Myrtle Warren.

"I can't believe you've done this," Ginny murmured, her brown eyes full of horror. "You've _killed_ someone." Of course, Ginny knew perfectly well how Myrtle Warren met her end, but it was different actually seeing the event happen.

(Also, it was a little difficult to imagine that Tom Riddle was the person who would become Voldemort in his near future.)

"The Basilisk killed her," Tom replied sharply. "For us." He reached out to Myrtle's dead body, and traced his finger down the middle of her chest. "She was a necessary sacrifice."

Ginny remained silent.

"The spells are in place. All you have to do is consume the soul."

Ginny almost cracked her neck with the speed she turned to face him. "What?" she gasped, horrified. "I'm not going—no! This was...this was what _you_ wanted. To make a...a _Horcrux._ "

Tom threw his diary down on the ground in front of Ginny. "Isn't it interesting that the object that brought us together, can be such a wonderful symbol in our union?" Ginny didn't mention just how symbolic that diary was. She still hadn't confessed just how she came to know Tom Riddle in the future—and he hadn't asked. He leaned forward and pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. "Don't you want to be with me forever, Ginevra?" he purred, his voice as smooth as silk.

Ginny stared at the diary, and a sudden reel of her unsavoury future with Harry flashed before her eyes.

Perhaps the sacrifice _was_ necessary.


End file.
